Dominican Republic 1965
Written: 1965;
Source: The Militant, Vol. 29,No. 26, 1965, p.4;
Transcribed: by Amaury Rodriguez, 2014.
Transcriber’s note: This editorial appeared in The Militant, organ of the US Socialist Workers Party (SWP) formerly Fourth International affiliated. The same issue carries an English translation of the land program proposed by the 14th of June Movement — the largest left-wing Dominican organization at the time — and a report from a Militant Labor Forum held on June 18, 1965 on the latest events from Santo Domingo.
Each day U.S. troops continue to occupy the Dominican Republic, the danger increases of a mass slaughter of the Dominican Constitutionalists who are surrounded by U.S. troops and boxed into the streets of downtown Santo Domingo.
Reporting to the United Nations June 18, Jose Mayobre, the UN representative in Santo Domingo, stated that the U.S.-supported troops of the reactionary Imbert junta[1] were “known to have massed in large numbers north of the corridor. “
“Radio Santo Domingo,” he continued, “which is controlled by the Imbert side, broadcast...inflammatory speeches stating that these were the last days of the ‘rebels’ and asking the civilian population of the Caamaño[2] area to cooperate with the Dominican army ‘which will enter the city any moment.’ “ The previous day, U.S. forces seized without warning an additional 50 square blocks of the downtown area, killing scores and wounding hundreds.
Most ominous, an Associated Press report said that the U.S. was planning to provoke an attack by the Constitutionalist which could serve as an excuse for the U.S occupying the entire area presently controlled by the Constitutionalists.
The U.S. forces which landed in the Dominican Republic in violation of the national sovereignty of that country have already murdered hundreds of Dominicans in their various maneuvers. But if the move to wipe out the Constitutionalists, they will kill thousands in a horrible re-enactment of the Warsaw ghetto by Hitler in 1944.
The Associated Press report was dismissed by the State Department as a “rumor.” But as long as U.S. troops remain in Santo Domingo, the danger exists that they will attempt to liquidate the revolutionaries in a house-by-house bloodbath.
U.S troops must be withdrawn from Santo Domingo before this horrifying possibility can become a reality. The Dominican people must be allowed to determine their own fate without U.S. bayonets dictating their future to them.
1. This refers to General Antonio Imbert Barrera, a staunch anti-communist who participated in the assassination of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in 1961.
2. This refers to Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó (1932-1973), the leader of the 1965 revolution and president of the Republic in Arms.